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Pastor's Corner

Vol 20 no 4
Winter 2005

The Reason for the Season

Rev Muriel Burrows“Christmas comes earlier every year!” someone complained recently. I didn’t realize how right she was until I went shopping a few days after Halloween to fill a Thanksgiving box to send to my daughter in Iraq. The store shelves were filled with Christmas paraphernalia. I have to admit that my heart skipped a beat. I love Christmas. I love to decorate my home for Christmas – set up a tree, string up the lights, hang the stockings. I love to skim through holiday catalogs, shop online (thank God for the Internet!), and wrap gifts.

I love the sappy Christmas commercials that cause me to reach for the Kleenex. And what is Christmas without the Grinch? And what is Christmas without The Nutcracker, and A Christmas Carol, and, of course, A Wonderful Life?

I love that at this time of year people are nicer to each other. I love that children’s faces are alight with anticipation. I love that families and friends gather around dinner tables and share a meal. But these are just the trappings of Christmas – and that is where many of us are – content with just the trappings.

This is akin to fighting your way through every over-crowded store, being stepped on and shoved to find the perfect gift. You take that gift home, lovingly wrap it and lay it under the Christmas tree. And then, come the big day, the kid rips off the paper, tosses aside the gift and spends the rest of the day playing with the BOX! That is what Christmas means to so many – we opt for the box rather than the gift. And what a wonderful gift we set aside – the best gift that ever was – none other than Emmanuel, God with us!

This is the truth about Christmas – that God stepped into history, into our reality, into our lives – and became one of us in Jesus, the Christ. In the church we begin the story with Advent, which is the time of waiting – of preparation – of anticipation. During the four Sundays of Advent, we, the Church, look forward with bated breath for the great and wonderful day of Christ’s arrival at Christmas.

Frederick Buechner, in his book of daily meditations titled, Listening to Your Life, says that “whether (Jesus) was born in 4 B.C. or 6 A.D., in Bethlehem or Nazareth, whether there were multitudes of the heavenly host to hymn the glory of it or just Mary and her husband – when the child was born, the whole course of human history was changed. That is a truth as unassailable as any truth.

“Art, music, literature, Western culture itself with all its institutions and Western man’s understanding of himself and his world – it is impossible to conceive how differently things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however, it did.

“And there is a truth beyond that: for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.”

There is nothing wrong with enjoying the trappings of Christmas, as long as we don’t mistake the trappings for the Truth – that “the Word became flesh and lived among us...full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Rev. Muriel Burrows